Families can take many forms

The argument

Viewing the family as the setting where a child is first exposed to the values and norms of the culture they grow up in allows for a broad interpretation of what a family is. If that exposure is the defining function, then whoever performs it qualifies. Anyone who introduces a child to those values — the child's biological parents, adoptive parents, stepparents, or an extended family member — becomes the "family". The definition follows the role rather than the legal or biological relationship, which is why it admits arrangements that a narrower definition would exclude. Popular usage appears to track this. Socializing children is an important component of a family for many people, and the effect of children's presence on whether a household is recognised as a family is large. In 2010, 39.6% of Americans considered an unmarried couple living together without a child to be a family. If that same unmarried couple has children, the percentage of Americans who consider them a family rises to 83%. The couple's own relationship is unchanged between the two cases — the same two people, unmarried, living together. What changes is that a child is now being raised, and recognition as a family more than doubles. That pattern is what the argument takes as evidence for the definition. If marriage or biology were what people were actually responding to, the figures would not move so sharply on the presence of a child alone. Overall, many people are willing to count various structures of membership as a family, provided that socializing children is part of the role those members perform — which suggests the function, not the form, is doing the work in how families are recognised.

Context

A family is the vehicle through which we socialize children. This allows for a family to take many forms. The definition is as applicable to a “traditional” family featuring a male and female parent as it is to modern iterations, where a grandparent, stepparent, or unmarried partner undertakes child-rearing responsibilities.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The definition of family should not take many forms and should be narrow and restrictive. Family is a structure in which a man and a woman are connected to each other through marriage. Viewing family through a narrow definition is called "exclusionism" in sociology. Exclusionists usually connect the meaning of family to traditional religious beliefs because traditional religious beliefs describe the family in this restrictive definition. The family should be only this definition and should not expand to multiple definitions that deviate from the traditional meaning of family. The definition of family should take many forms including when there are no children. Family is based on love and attachment regardless of its members. Anyone can be considered as part of the family as long as one considers them members of the family. Inclusionists consider friends, relatives, and other people with connections as part of the family. This definition does not require the presence of children. Saying that a family can take many forms with the condition that socializing children is a component of it is too restrictive.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise assumes its own definition and reports what follows from it, which is not an argument for adopting it. It also carries a consequence the position does not want: any teacher, neighbour or institution that introduces a child to cultural norms would count as family. [Rejecting P2] Survey figures record what people call a family, not what a sociological definition should be, and they cut against the premise as much as for it — that four in ten counted a childless couple shows the socialising role is not treated as required. The definition also excludes couples without children and adult siblings, which is a strong result to accept on this evidence, and the counter presses the point from both directions.